Atuin review, pricing and verdict

Open-source shell history with encrypted sync across machines, plus Threads to search and resume coding-agent sessions (32.3k GitHub stars).

Best for
DevOps engineer
Not for
Occasional terminal user

By , Founder and editor

Should you use Atuin?

Pick Atuin if you juggle several machines and coding agents and want one searchable, encrypted record of what each one did. Skip it on a single machine with no agents. Its homepage claims 600M+ synced commands and 300+ contributors, and the client is open source.

One encrypted history that covers shell commands and sessions from several coding agents, searchable on every machine.

Years of synced commands and agent sessions create lock-in through the data it holds, while the MIT licence and self-hosting weaken that lock-in.

Also for

  • Software engineer using several coding agents
  • Developers who work across several machines
Show 2 more
  • Engineers running Claude Code and Codex side by side
  • DevOps and SRE engineers who live in the terminal

Main trade-off

Setup and key handling add friction, and Atuin AI is missing outside zsh, bash and fish.

Atuin pricing

No paid plan is published on atuin.sh or in the docs, read 12 November 2026. The sync server can also be self-hosted at your own infrastructure cost.

What Atuin does

Atuin keeps shell history in an open-source SQLite database with the directory, exit code, duration and host of each command, then syncs it end-to-end encrypted. Since version 18.24 its Threads feature also indexes coding-agent sessions from five agents. It supports zsh, bash, fish, nushell, xonsh and PowerShell.

  • Context-rich history search

    Stores directory, duration, exit code, host and session with each command, so a query like atuin search --cwd . --exit 0 deploy returns only commands that worked in that folder.

  • Encrypted sync

    Per Atuin's docs, history is encrypted on your machine before upload, so the sync server only ever holds ciphertext, and the server code is open source if you would rather run it.

  • Atuin Threads

    Indexes sessions from Claude Code, Codex, Pi, Omp and OpenCode, then lets you search, resume or fork them in another agent on another machine.

  • MCP server

    Gives agents history and session search as a tool, installed with atuin mcp install for Claude, Codex, Pi or OpenCode.

Show all 7 features

  • Agent command hooks

    Tags each recorded command with who ran it, and hides agent-run commands from interactive search by default.

  • Atuin AI

    Turns a question into a runnable shell command, can run bash for context, and asks for an extra confirmation on commands it scores as dangerous.

  • Secret filters

    Config options history_filter and cwd_filter keep matching commands and whole directories out of the history.

Works with

  • Claude Code
  • Codex
  • OpenCode
  • pi
  • GitHub Copilot
  • Kiro
  • zsh
  • bash
  • fish

Missing integrations

  • Cursor (no dedicated hook listed)

Most users expect these and they are not currently supported.

Capabilities

  • Shell history
  • Terminal
  • Agent memory
  • MCP
  • Encrypted sync
  • Command line
  • Session search

Strengths and limits

Strengths

  • Threads is not tied to one agent: the launch post shows a Claude Code session resumed in Codex on another machine with its context intact.
  • Setup is two commands, the installer script and atuin setup, which Atuin says takes about two minutes, and atuin import auto brings existing history across.
  • Development is active: the GitHub releases page lists seven stable releases from 18.24.0 to 18.24.6 plus an 18.25 beta.
  • Because the server is open source and sync is optional, an engineer on a locked-down network can keep everything local or host sync inside their own infrastructure.

Limits

  • History lives in SQLite, which Atuin's known-issues page says can slow a shell on ZFS in some configurations and does not suit network filesystems such as NFS, so shared-home and ZFS users are affected.
  • Atuin's support page shows PowerShell, xonsh and nushell as community-supported tier 2 shells without Atuin AI, and Windows lacks syntax highlighting and pty-proxy.
  • Losing the encryption key is final: the sync docs say the developers can do nothing to recover it and there is no password reset, so a new machine needs the key saved from the first one.

How Hokai rates it

  • Ease of use7.5 / 10
  • Features8.0 / 10
  • Value for money9.0 / 10
  • Support7.5 / 10

Atuin alternatives

The nearest AI tools on Hokai for the same job.

ToolPrice fromFree planRuns onRating
Atuin This pageFreeYesMac · Windows4.0
Claude CodeAnthropic's agent for the terminal, IDEs, desktop, web and mobile that edits files, runs tests and opens pull requests. There is no free plan.$20/moNoWeb · iOS · Android · Mac · Windows4.6
DevinDevin is Cognition's autonomous AI software engineer that plans, codes, tests, and ships pull requests, with a Free plan and several paid tiers.$20/moYesWeb · Mac · Windows4.6
CursorCursor is an AI code editor built on VS Code, widely adopted across large enterprise engineering teams, with Agent Mode, Tab completion, and Cloud Agents.$8/moYesWeb · iOS · Mac · Windows4.4

Atuin facts

Works offline
Yes
Minimum skill level
Intermediate
Price band
Free
Maker founded
2020

Data and privacy

MIT

Questions about Atuin

How much does Atuin cost?

Atuin publishes no paid plan as of 12 November 2026. The client is MIT-licensed and free, the hosted sync server needs only a registered account, and atuin.sh says Atuin AI is free during testing. The founder wrote in January 2024 that she hoped to add premium hosted features and support business use, so a paid tier may appear later.

Can I use Atuin without creating an account?

Yes. Search and history work locally with no account, and sync is optional. With sync off, Atuin's FAQ says it makes no network requests of its own apart from an update check to api.atuin.sh at most once an hour, which update_check = false turns off. Atuin AI is the exception: it needs an Atuin Hub login unless you self-host its backend.

Which coding agents does Atuin record commands from?

The support page lists Claude Code, Codex, Copilot, Kiro, opencode and pi, set up with atuin hook install. Each record carries an author tag, and interactive search hides agent-run commands by default so ctrl-r stays yours. Any other agent that runs commands in your shell can still search history with atuin search, but without the author tag.

Does Atuin work on Windows and in PowerShell?

Yes, with limits. Windows x86_64 has an official prebuilt binary that is tested in CI, but no syntax highlighting or pty-proxy. PowerShell is a tier 2 shell, supported by the community on a best-effort basis, with history search but no inline popup or Atuin AI. WSL-2 is a tier 1 target.

Does Atuin Threads upload my agent sessions by default?

No. The launch post says capturing agent sessions is opt-in. Synced sessions are end-to-end encrypted, so Atuin says it cannot read them, and you can use the hosted server, run your own or keep everything local, while team sharing is still being built. Install Atuin if you run coding agents on more than one machine; on a single machine with no agents, keep your current history setup.

About Atuin

Atuin is an open-source terminal tool that replaces a shell's history file with a SQLite database and records the directory, duration, exit code, host and session of every command. Ellie Huxtable started the project, whose documentation traces back to October 2020, and in January 2024 she left her job leading infrastructure at PostHog to work on it full time. The code is MIT-licensed on GitHub, where it has 32.3k stars and about 2,600 commits. It suits developers who move between several machines and several coding agents.

Read the full background

Version 18.24 added Threads, which points the same encrypted sync engine at coding-agent sessions. Running atuin resume opens a terminal picker, and a session begun in Claude Code on a dev server can be continued in Codex on a laptop with its context intact. If you are still choosing between those two agents, the Codex vs Claude Code guide covers that decision. Release 18.24.6 is the newest stable tag on the GitHub releases page as of 12 November 2026.

Two other pieces sit on top. Atuin AI opens when you type a question mark at an empty prompt in zsh, bash or fish, answers with a command you can run or insert, and flags risky ones first. An MCP server lets an agent such as OpenAI Codex or OpenCode search earlier work itself, and hooks record what GitHub Copilot and the other supported agents run. Read on 12 November 2026 and not run, the install script at setup.atuin.sh is 7,395 bytes of POSIX shell that needs curl, pulls the installer from the latest GitHub release and then calls atuin setup. More tools in this space are on the AI coding assistants list.

Skip it if you use one machine and no coding agents: the sync setup and key handling would be extra work for a history file that already does the job. Windows and PowerShell users get less, because PowerShell is a community-supported shell without the inline popup or Atuin AI. Atuin's own FAQ names two plain history tools as alternatives, hishtory (written in Go, synced history) and mcfly (local only, ranks results with a small neural network), and neither has a Hokai record yet.

Sources and guides

Official sources

Product facts on this page (pricing, plans, integrations, compliance) are read from Atuin's own pages and documentation. The verdict is Hokai's reading of them, not the vendor's claim.

Lists that include Atuin

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